More Updates

Time for some updates! Sheesh. Sorry about that...

Chuck went to Mancation a few weekends ago. I think it's their 6th year? 7th? Impressive, whatever it is. They have a great time though, and then Chuck is really glad to be home and in a house that is NOT full of a dozen guys.

We had conferences for Jack last week. He's kicking his academic work's *ss. Can I say that? He really is though. Example - the expectation for the END of kindergarten is for him to be at level 4 of this one reading program. In February he was on level 8. So he's doing really well. His teacher is great and we are able to bounce lots of ideas off of her and work together with her to help Jack with things he's struggling with. Example - the final statement on his conference form was "We need to work with Jack on truth-telling and making good choices." I wanted to slither off of my chair and under the table, but I thought that wasn't really modeling good choices so I sat upright and quietly mumbled obscenities to myself instead.

We found out that he kissed Izzy again. He hadn't for a few months, but I guess he put his jacket up over his mouth and then leaned in. Bad Jack. We talked about it a LOT on the way home, and all through dinner. He was in his room for awhile, then came out with "I LOVE IZZY" printed neatly across his entire forearm. The upshot? He spelled it correctly, and I guess he's a kid who knows what he wants. Plus he's adorable.

Ryker continues to be our little puppy. He's hilarious. Tonight he was "reading" us a joke book, after I read it first. He'd look at an illustration of an elephant and then go "why da eh-ya-phent sooo big?" and we'd say "why?" and he'd go "I don't know" and turn the page. We did that over and over and over.

I keep forgetting to post some of my favorite words of his - but my current one is "moan" which really means "more." "Can I have some moan?" Hilarious every single time. Also, he now "chaps his yips" before bed, with his chapstick, and asks you if you want him to chap YOUR lips as well. Makes perfect sense, when you think about it.

I'm getting discharged from PT/OT tomorrow. That will be my 24th appointment, and that is all that insurance covers. 24 appointments since November. It's like a second home now. I saw the spine doc on Tuesday and he spent a full hour with me in the room - not leaving once. Mostly he was scratching his head and re-reading his notes and testing and re-testing various things on me. I appear to be a conundrum. I have progressed really well with their machines - achieving the goal weight on both of the two machines I'm in. I am also able to do the home program (circuit) just fine by myself. So they are discharging me because I can't achieve much else IN their gym. They'll discharge me to their maintenance program, which means I'll actually be back there once a month for a long time, but it's better than twice a week! The question then became what to DO with me since I'm still numb on the right side of my right leg, and I still can't do any cardio without increasing my leg symptoms. So we're doing an MRI on Monday and then I'll go back to him to review the films. We'll go from there. For extra sympathy, I'll remind you all that this started back in OCTOBER.

But now we're moving into spring, planning summer camps/trips already, setting up a chore-chart for Jack, and marching forward.